The artificial intelligence boom is transforming employee compensation at America’s leading chipmakers, creating powerful financial incentives that are dramatically reducing turnover rates. As Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom ride the wave of surging demand for AI-powering chips, their stock prices have skyrocketed—and so have the restricted stock unit (RSU) packages that form a significant portion of employee compensation.
The numbers tell a compelling story: Nvidia’s voluntary turnover rate has plummeted from 5.3% in 2023 to just 2.5% in 2025, while Broadcom reported a 6.2% attrition rate, well below the technology industry benchmark. These retention gains are directly tied to equity compensation packages that have ballooned in value alongside stock prices. Since January 2023, these three chipmakers have outpaced tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft in stock growth, with even AMD—the “poorest” performing of the three—beating most of Big Tech.
The financial impact on individual employees is staggering. One Nvidia equity package worth $488,000 in 2023 is now valued at over $2.2 million, according to data from Levels.fyi. Even more modest packages have seen extraordinary growth: a $66,000 Broadcom RSU grant from 2023 has jumped to approximately $265,000. Multiple Broadcom employees report holding RSU packages worth over $6 million each, while several Nvidia employees have seen their equity grants increase by over 350% since 2023.
However, there’s a significant catch: these stock payouts vest over time, typically taking up to four years for full payout. This creates what employees and industry observers call “golden handcuffs"—powerful financial disincentives to leave. One Nvidia employee planning to depart when their equity vests told Business Insider that leaving earlier would have a “big cost,” adding they couldn’t command their current total compensation elsewhere.
The retention strategy mirrors tactics long used by tech giants like Amazon and Google, but the AI boom has supercharged its effectiveness. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has openly boasted about making employees wealthy, with the company reporting that 20% of employees have been there for 10 years and 40% for more than five years. Some employees describe colleagues entering “semi-retirement” mode, coasting while their stock continues to appreciate. As one Nvidia employee explained, many think logically: “Who am I to walk away from this job that guarantees that my kids will never have student debt?”
Nvidia has also adopted “front-loading” vesting schedules, giving employees their biggest equity chunk in the first year—a tactic used by Google, Uber, and others to attract top talent while tying future rewards to performance.
Key Quotes
If I wanted to leave now, I do not think I can command the salary I have now with another company.
An Nvidia employee planning to leave when their equity vests explained the financial reality of their situation, illustrating how the AI boom has created compensation packages that are nearly impossible to replicate elsewhere in the industry.
Who am I to walk away from this job that guarantees that my kids will never have student debt?
An Nvidia employee described the mindset of colleagues with families who are staying at the company, highlighting how life-changing wealth from AI-driven stock appreciation is fundamentally altering career decisions and creating multi-generational financial security.
Given the recent rise of the share price, people who have been able to hold on to their shares will now be looking forward to a very comfortable retirement.
A Broadcom employee whose RSUs are valued at over six times their salary explained the transformative impact of the AI boom on long-term employees, many of whom are now positioned for early retirement based solely on equity compensation.
The golden handcuffs are RSUs. No one’s going to put in their notice now to go to other opportunities.
A former Broadcom employee who estimates they lost approximately $2.5 million in unvested RSUs when they left the company captured the powerful retention effect of equity compensation in the current AI-driven market environment.
Our Take
The “golden handcuffs” phenomenon at AI chipmakers represents a fascinating intersection of technology booms, compensation strategy, and talent dynamics. While these retention rates might seem like an unqualified win for Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom, they reveal a more complex picture. The emergence of “rest and vest” culture—where financially secure employees coast rather than innovate—could paradoxically slow the pace of advancement at the very companies driving AI forward. This creates an opening for hungrier competitors, though they’ll struggle to recruit talent away from these golden handcuffs. The front-loading strategy Nvidia has adopted shows sophisticated thinking about balancing immediate attraction with long-term retention and performance incentives. However, the extreme wealth concentration among employees at these three companies—while individually beneficial—may contribute to broader concerns about AI’s economic impact and inequality. As the AI infrastructure layer consolidates around a few dominant players with locked-in talent, we may see innovation increasingly coming from architectural improvements rather than competitive disruption.
Why This Matters
This story reveals a critical dynamic shaping the AI industry’s talent landscape at a pivotal moment. As demand for AI infrastructure explodes, the companies building the hardware backbone—particularly GPU and chip manufacturers—have become extraordinarily valuable. Their ability to retain engineering talent through equity compensation creates a significant competitive moat that’s difficult for competitors or startups to overcome.
The retention rates at these chipmakers have profound implications for AI development and innovation. With turnover at historic lows, these companies maintain institutional knowledge and engineering expertise essential for advancing chip architectures that power large language models and other AI systems. However, the “golden handcuffs” phenomenon also raises questions about workforce motivation and innovation, with some employees admittedly “resting and vesting” rather than pushing boundaries.
For the broader tech ecosystem, this trend could create talent bottlenecks. If the best chip designers and AI hardware engineers are financially locked into their current positions, AI startups and competitors may struggle to recruit the expertise needed to challenge incumbents. This consolidation of talent mirrors the concentration of AI computing power itself, potentially reinforcing the dominance of a few major players in the AI hardware space for years to come.
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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-amd-broadcom-chipmakers-employee-retention-ai-boom-2025-10